England 2025 still fresh impressiones II.

After the Spoonfest, after that sad moment when most of the folks go back home I stayed few days at Robin’s Police Righthand house and was returning to the pile of wood.

I managed to finish many carvings. Some of those had to wait for the coat binding the colours to settle as all cups are meant for use with hot water.

Well, i spent time carving of course and what else to do while staying at somebody’s place? Gathering nuts for colour, baking bread, gardening  and reading, at home in my heart..And that is something quite important to feel welcomed!

What was waiting me next was the workshop in London.

Bloombowl Workshop London!

And it was worth coming! The Stepney City Farm appeared to be a cool space for growing. If people speak a lot about the legendary parisian gardens that fed the whole city and were selling to London’s market too in not so distant history here is an example how gardening in the city can look like including artistic workshops at its heart. So what we were looking for while visiting famous Bec Hellouin previously this year, because the founder was speaking about that as something they would like to do, but could not find it “yet” I could see here in London. By the way there is another farm in the neighborhood – Hackney where there is also! a carving club (Ed from this group was participating at our workshop.)

There were four students coming to the workshop- Andy, Deborah, Nico and Ed plus Tim who leads the Guild now after he took it over from Barn. I was pleased to have some really skilled carvers at my workshop again.

Carving a Bloom Bowl is not so easy as many approaches I take are different from carving a spoon or a bowl secured somehow either wedged or lashed or held by a holdfast. Techniques i teach are easy to use anywhere we are without some special devices. One could say it is quite a revolutionary thing, maybe, on the other hand it is just simple, but you have to build up skills and know a technique to do this right way while the other way can feels safer – we should never forget about safety and how “feels” what we do, OaK!

The time to say goodbye had come and I was leaving England with many thoughts about friends and outstanding characters I met. I wished I could return soon. But there is someone in our place and lots of nice work like scything and carpentry are waiting in Belgium for my return. We leave to have a chance to meet up again, don’t we? 🙂

More souvenirs to share to come in posts following soon!

Well, as I write this three weeks after I can say I am very happy and thankful for great feedback and that the Blom Bowls are becoming  popular. We use them often, people here quite love them too and now I think I go to have a bit of ice-cream as this can be one of the last really warm days here in Belgium, haha 😄